The signal processing of video camera images and the like has conventionally been accomplished by means of converting an enormous amount of analog data fetched by an image sensor into a digital format, and conducting processing by means of a digital computer.
When such a method is employed in concert with an increase in the number of pixels, the amount of data to be processed increases greatly, and it becomes impossible to conduct signal processing in real time. It is thus necessary to conduct signal processing completely in parallel at a hardware level, whether the inputted data is in an analog or multilevel format; however, in order to accomplish this, a circuit is rehired to temporarily store the analog or multilevel data incorporated by the sensor or data representing intermediate calculations.
However, in order to realize circuitry such as that conventionally known, a large number of elements was required, and furthermore, because the addition of the multilevel data was accomplished by means of the addition of electrical current, the amount of power consumed was large and it was thus difficult to conduct signal processing in a completely parallel format at the hardware level among the data fetched by the pixel sensors.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a semiconductor circuit which is capable of fetching and storing analog or multilevel data using simple circuitry.